Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense Review

Get your Gandalf on.

Applying a movie license to a standard game genre is often a recipe for mediocrity. Glu bucks this trend with Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense for the iPhone and iPad, an enjoyable tower defense game where you deploy the heroic Fellowship and its allies to stop the marching armies of Sauron. Does it reinvent the wheel? No, but it's solid enough to easily recommend to fans of either Frodo or tower defenders.

Middle-earth Defense offers 18 stages, stretched across seven memorable locations from the books and film trilogy, such as the Tower of Orthanc and the White City of Gondor. In each realm, you must drag and drop defenses to prevent monsters like wargs and Uruk-Hai from overtaking the area. Though the stars here are heroes from the Fellowship like Aragorn, a lot of time is spent deploying lower-level units and defenses (such as archers or walls) to slow the assault. Your ace in the hole, though, is always the Fellowship as those fighters have vastly superior attack skills, including special moves that can really turn the tide in a bad situation.

One thing to note about Middle-earth Defense is that if you are a tower defense veteran, you will not find much challenge here. But that's a very smart decision on Glu's part. The Lord of the Rings license is bound to draw in newcomers that perhaps aren't well-versed in the minutiae of tower defense games, and so Middle-earth Defense plays it safe with very basic formula. You place units and upgrade them, for example, but units do not have health like other tower defense games.

Draggin' dragons

Interestingly enough, between waves, Middle-earth Defense pauses and lets you adjust your defenses. That's quite a favor, but it reduces frustration. It also makes using the special heroes more fun. If they were just stuck in a single spot, their effectiveness could be zeroed out for several waves.

Middle-earth Defense also includes a Challenge mode, which removes the story from the action and just tests your resolve by throwing wave after wave of monsters at you. When you are finally overrun, the game ends. It's a nice survival mode that adds extra longevity to Middle-earth Defense.

Middle-earth Defense is available for both the iPhone and iPad. Both versions play roughly the same, although the extra real estate of the iPad is always nice for a strategy game like this. The iPhone version supports Retina displays, but even though it does look pretty good, Middle-earth Defense is not a showcase for the high-res screen. Glu did a good job, though, replicating recognizable locations and characters from the movies. Middle-earth Defense is unmistakably a Lord of the Rings game.

The Verdict

Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense is a good, accessible tower defense game that newcomers will enjoy. It isn&#Array;t as deep as many of its competitors, but that&#Array;s obviously by design. So, if you like a deep challenge, perhaps Middle-earth Defense isn&#Array;t the game for you. But thanks to a great use of the Lord of the Rings license, Middle-earth Defense will appeal to fans of the still-excellent movie trilogy.